Notes on Web Design, Development, Standards, Typography, Music, and More

Can People Find You? Maps To Your Location

Jakob Nielsen’s July 8th article is Helping Users Find Physical Locations. Do you have a map at your Web site for people to find you? If so, do you know if people can find the map easily and also find your location easily?

Like other important items, make sure that visitors can quickly and easily notice that a map is available. They must know it exists in order to use it, naturally.

And how can you make sure it’s easy to find? Well, you don’t need flashing neon lights, but you do need to make sure it’s obvious and stands out. How to make this feature obvious can vary depending on your own site navigation and layout. Generally, though, a link to it shouldn’t be buried down the page. Good use of color to help, perhaps a graphic of some kind, or including a link to your map within the site navigation on each page are possibilities, depending on your site.

I also feel it’s especially helpful if your map can be easily printed out for people to take it along with them on their way to your location. I also often recommend a visual map and written directions. Some people work better with one or the other, so offering both may provide better user friendliness.

Nielsen notes maps at Toys 'R Us scored poorly while maps at Charles Schwab scored the best. Can you tell any difference difference between finding them or following the maps? Check out Nielsen’s article and see if you agree.

And here’s one more to check out that was done by SKDesigns: Capital Nursery.

I’d love to know if you can find any maps, and if so, if they were easy enough to access and understand. Also, do you have some examples to share of sites with easy-to-find maps or hard-to-find maps?